End game?
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In one of the summaries of the developer q&a's it was said, "The difference between primitive equipment and advanced equipment is not so big. Power gaps are in general quite small". It makes me wonder what the end game is suppose to be exactly, if a wooden club is going to be more or less equal to a steel mace why even bother to progress or even gain these items?
Link to what I'm talking about, 6th line under "Survival Mechanics"
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There is actually quit a bit of difference between a player with primitive gear and a player decked out in top gear with a full talent tree. And even naked a veteran player will destroy a newbie wearing starter gear.
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Devs always say crap like that.
The problem is players want mutually exclusive things, so devs tend to tell them whatever they want to hear even when it's contradictory. Like players want a massive game world, but they want instant travel everywhere. They want to advance their character easily with no limits, but good lord in heaven no one better be able to advance faster than they do.
So devs always say progress is horizontal, but at the same time actual in-game stuff gives vertical progression. They'll probably balance it similar to AO, where gear increases in ability linearly, but exponentially in cost.
So someone in 10k value T4 gear is at strength 10, and someone in 10M value T8 gear is at strength 13. In a full loot game this actually is balancing, because it means a skilled T4 group has a chance of winning big but only losing small.
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I don't think we will know how much vertical progression is in the game until we have the new round of alpha testing in February. This game is changing a lot through the development process so what was true in the past might not be true going forward.
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Once it's all fleshed out, I assume it will be that those with the best gear, will obviously be a lot stronger. That said, if someone with lesser gear (let's say medium quality/rarity) could still put up a decent fight if they have the right skill level, or.....take an opportunistic approach, such as attacking them when they are unprepared etc.
Also, as a lot of this game is group based. I'd probably put my money on 2x undergeared people fighting a 1x overgeared person. Numbers will matter in this universe.
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There was no endgame in SWG and yet to this day people cry over that game ending. The game was about the group, city, pvp; ie everyday fun. The only finality most the players in our guild found themselves doing was finishing the achievements or unlocking their jedi status. Here we have the knowledge tree and becoming an angel/demon.
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@Farlander said in End game?:
There was no endgame in SWG and yet to this day people cry over that game ending. The game was about the group, city, pvp; ie everyday fun. The only finality most the players in our guild found themselves doing was finishing the achievements or unlocking their jedi status. Here we have the knowledge tree and becoming an angel/demon.
and Lich... don't forget the Liches less they lynch you !
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ye... there's a disappointing amount of vertical progression. but, if it wasn't there, i suppose there wouldn't be much of a game to play. Once a player reaches 'end game' with all the KP (Knowledge Points) and starts crafting fantastical hyper-specific gear, it will end up being balanced and 'horizontal' between players, as of there being a solid cap.
That said though... depending on how a player places their points, they could have a major advantage or a major disadvantage over others to begin with. Say, someone like myself going full hardcore and having only 6 in every stat... it's literally impossible to reach stat caps in a state like that XD
most of the time, i hyper focus for crit bow builds, meaning i have low hp, defence and memory to learn skills. Even if i spec into survivability, the chance of beating someone hyper specced into being a brute tank is near on impossible for me to win. However, i would have a pretty descent advantage over mages. There is give and take in everything. I plan to be a hunter/gatherer, so that's what i have min/maxed to do
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@WaterMerchant said in End game?:
In one of the summaries of the developer q&a's it was said, "The difference between primitive equipment and advanced equipment is not so big. Power gaps are in general quite small". It makes me wonder what the end game is suppose to be exactly, if a wooden club is going to be more or less equal to a steel mace why even bother to progress or even gain these items?
I completely didn't answer your question in my info post/ramble. The point in upgrading your gear at the end is supposed to be to specialise in killing something specific. Your gear at first will be very generalised, so you will take a descent amount of damage from pretty much everything. in the 'end-game', fighting fire shamans for example, you can cap out your fire restsance (1000 last test i played, reducing fire damage taken by 79% i think it was) and make the fights an absolute joke. Whereas, running in unprepared, you can very easily get taken out in a few hits or even a single hit if you have negative fire resist and low hp (or even just very low hp). Fighting Spider Liches, you can cap your frost resist. Fighting wolves, you can cap your armour, etc. etc.
To add to this... using different weapons and skills on enemies will have various effectiveness. You shouldn't use just swords and only swords for the entirety of your playthough. There are enemies that resist slash dammage immensely and others that are immune. For example, wisps can only be hit by weapons that can hit incorporeal enemie, or by magic spells. Most (if not all) spiders have either negative or really low fire resistance). Skeletons have immense pierce resistance, and so on.
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The thing you have to realize is that a Wooden Club and a Steel mace are effectively the same classification of weapon. In other words, the Steel Mace is going to be better, in general, than the Wooden Club, as it is a 1 handed bludgeoning weapon made from better materials....but that's it. Your not looking at massive divergent weapons/armor in the game. There are no 'Mace of Disruption' boss drops to throw things really off kilter.
Just as was said previously, certain equipment is better vs certain mobs, certain equipment is a little bit better because its made of sturdier materials, and some equipment, made from more exotic materials, might even include a Free equivalent enchantment on it, but it is generally only effectively a Tier 1 enchantment, so not massively game-changing.
Each Weapon and Piece of armor has several factors that go into how effective they are, but in and of themselves, none of these factors drastically make a weapon stand out in all situations.
They each have a limited number of enchantments they can hold, with the Torso Armor piece holding the most so far in game, at I believe it was 7 spots. Each enchantment you put on the gear costs 1 spot per tier of the enchantment, so at most, that body armor could hold 2 Tier 3 enchantments, and 1 Tier 1 enchantment, plus if made of an exotic material, have 1 additional Tier 1 equivalent enchantment on it. This is not as huge a difference as gear has in most other MMOs, where the right piece of gear can get you through entire quest lines nearly unscathed or unstoppable (Armor or Weapon)
Also, every piece of gear has a degredation rate, as you use it, it breaks down. Right now, there are no plans for a Repair ability, so gear must be periodically replaced, and the reagents and exotic materials can be harder to acquire than going with the simpler version of gear, not to mention more time consuming to craft overall.
Finally, there is no Level requirement to use specific gear, and not really any Stat requirements worth mentioning. This means a Brand new, day 1 character can join in on a Raid with his friends who've been playing for 6 months, and all the friends have to do to make him comparable in battle is to throw him some mid-to-high level gear. The main deficit that the newb will have in the battles is a lack of combat options, as they will only have unlocked the starting skills for their archetype in this scenario, and they will not have increased their Talent Tree abilities at all yet. Both of these things are nice, but neither by themselves is gamebreakingly going to set a character above the others in a Raid Group.
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@GamerSeuss said in End game?:
The main deficit that the newb will have in the battles is a lack of combat options, as they will only have unlocked the starting skills for their archetype in this scenario, and they will not have increased their Talent Tree abilities at all yet. Both of these things are nice, but neither by themselves is gamebreakingly going to set a character above the others in a Raid Group.
No, either is a colossal disadvantage. It won't turn the tide of a group fight, but it will decide which characters make up the casualties.
Talents not only can add to stats (which have exponential effects, especially past 20), but include perks such as complete immunity to poison. Talents combined with gear define leagues.
The starter skills are completely laughable. Veterans will shrug them off with the myriad of heals and buffs available, especially in a group full of specialists. Words of Power are disproportionately strong and the only fresh character who can take them on is a tank build... which Fractured intentionally makes expensive and newbie-unfriendly.
Progression is inherently vertical; what has "no vertical progression" has no progression. Knowledge Points are just experience points with non-static level ups.
